In keeping with the gentle request not to hijack at a moment’s whim, I’ve decided to let this new thread refer to This Photography-Related Thread and not just pile into it.
Instead of telling what photo you felt was the most famous, which to me was a simple poll, I’m MUCH more interested in what photograph has impacted you the most.
Is it a celeb shot? A dramatic war shot? A historically important shot? A documentary moment in time, of not-so-huge historical import?
I love photography, I’ve many collections of famous photos as used by UPI, Time, Life, etc. Ansel Adams ( and, to be honest, those taken by yosemitebabe ) are also amongst my favorites.
So, let me start this off with mine. As a lover of the idea and reality of space travel, I have to say that the most important photograph to me will always be EarthRise, as taken coming around from the dark side of the moon.
We see ourselves from a certain point of view in the universe. No matter what religion, what basis of faith or lack of thereof, we are Earthlings in practicality. For the first time, we saw ourselves as other civilizations would see us. I find it to be endlessly moving.
I’ve a short list of other photographs I adore, from different areas of interest. But, this one is the absolute living end ( pardon the pun ).
The one photograph that always makes me tear up, no matter how many times I see it, is the one of the fireman carrying the dead 1-year-old child out of the wreckage in Oklahoma city.
I think the most moving one I’ve seen is the OK City fireman, but the most deeply affecting one for me anyway is the lone Chinese man standing down a column of tanks.
Of course, I reserve the right to change my opinionas I think of others
Right after the Tet Offensive in 1968 TIME MAGIZINE ran a series of photos. One of them was a view of a back hoe with its bucket filled with the bodies of four or five GIs. It was as horrible a picture as I have seen, not exceeded by the naked little girl fleeing a bombed village or the Saigon police chief murdering a VC sapper. Just thinking about it put a knot in my stomach. Those guys were my comrades. There but for the grace of God…
I’ll cast another vote for the photograph of the man stopping the tank column in Tiananmen Square. To me, it symbolizes how indomitable the human spirit is.
Another photo that really affects me is one from WWII, of a Chinese baby, dirty and nearly naked, sitting in the middle of a bombed-out ruin and bawling its eyes out. I think it was taken during the Rape of Nanjing, but I’m not sure. I’ve always wondered if that baby survived the war.
Here is a link to some of the most powerful photos of the 20th century (at least according to one particular Stanford student ), including 3 already mentioned here.
A national Georgraphic photo, taken during the excavation of an ancient greek city than had been leveled by an earthquake millenia ago. The photo was of the skeletons of a man, a woman, and an infant. By the position of the bodies, the man was trying to shield the woman from the collapsing roof, and the woman was trying to protect the infant. That was the saddest photo I’ve ever seen.
There are several contenders, but before I opened this thread and saw Calliope’s response I was thinking of the same photo. I think the child’s name was Baylee Almand. Or something close. There are so many things about the photo that get me. And I wasn’t a mom then, but now that I am, it gets me even more.
Since I’m a teenager I’m largely unfamiliar with pictures of Vietnam and whatnot, though one older picture that struck a nerve in me was that of an Australian airman POW during WWII. There picture captured the tragic image of the POW blindfolded as a Japanese soldier raised his sword into the air, the picture being taken literally seconds before the man’s head was separated from his body. It was quite disturbing to think that the image itself almost contained the essence of a life being extinguished.
The caption explained that his execution was just a demonstration, that he had done nothing wrong.
There’s a lot of photographs to chose from, and it’s near impossible to pick one. But I’ll share one anyway. Well, actually, it’s a series of pictures.
The pictures were taken on Dam Square in Amsterdam, on May 7, 1945. Officially 2 days after the liberation of the Netherlands, a parade was organised to welcome the (mostly) Canadian troups to the city.
Left behind German soldiers, holed up in a few warehouses surrounding the square (and obviously with no safe way out of the country), emptied their last rounds on the celebrating crowd, killing 22 people and injuring many more.
In my pre-teen years my grandfather often took me to the public library at night. While he did reading research, I was free to roam the library.
I found a book: “A Pictoral History of World War Two”. For some morbid reason, night after night I returned to that book and the pictures of starved survivors of the Nazi concentration camps. To this day, I can still close my eyes and visualize the skeleton-like people in those tragic pictures.
The one that I can’t help staring long at whenever I see it is the one of a sister of my mother’s that was killed by a car about age 6. She looks like my mother did a couple of years before that.
It’s a real puzzle to me- someone familiar, that died long before I was born, and a rellative unknown to me until I was an adult.
There was one of a 4-year old in Somalia that was shadowed by a vulture on the ground waiting for the child to die. I think it was around 1994? The photographer won the big photography prize, maybe the pulitzer for photography. About a year later, he committed suicide. I think he was distraught about how he didn’t rush in to help the child and instead “selfishly” took a picture of her for his own betterment. Can someone help me out here?
back in '93 I was going to Venezuela for a wedding, and we stopped in Miami. This must have been teh time of a lot of boat people coming to the US from Cuba. The Miami paper had a picture that covered half the front page, in color.
It was of a man, standing up in what passed for a boat, with his hands folded in prayer looking up to God. this little boat was in the middle of the ocean, all around him, the water a deep blue and wavy. There were other people in the boat behind him rowing with what passed as oars. The photo brought home what an ordeal they go through to get here.
There are three that I can recall right off the bat having a significant emotional impact on me.
(1) The previously mentioned photograph of the firefighter holding the lifeless body of a toddler killed in the Oklahoma City bombing. That photo appeared on the cover of Newsweek and I had it on the coffee table for the longest time, just lingering over it emotionally, mentally, and philosophically.
(2) The incredibly well-known recent photo of the firemen putting up the flag at the rubble of the WTC. When that photo appeared in the papers on Sept. 12, I immediately cut it out, make multiple copies, and put it up in my classroom. It’s an amazing photo that embodies, I believe, much of what we as a nation was feeling that day.
(3) This is one that few outside the horse racing circle may be familiar with. In 1999, Charismatic (The Kentucky Derby-Preakness winner) was trying to become the 1st Triple Crown winner in 21 years by winning the Belmont stakes. Tragically, he broke down in the homestretch. His jockey forcibly pulled the colt up, just a few yards past the wire, and he then jumped off the colt and cradled the injured leg in his arms. By doing this, the jock most certainly prevented the colt from suffering more damage, if not saving his life. The photo became an art print by the foremost artist of the racing world (and this print was my Christmas present this past year).
Most tragically, the jockey, Chris Antley, was found dead in his Pasadena home two years later from an apparent drug overdose. Charismatic, meanwhile, is enjoying the luxurious life of a stud horse. His first babies will race next year.
I just did a quick search on the Net and was unable to find a copy of the photo of Antley and Charismatic (I figured most everyone knew what the other two pictures look like, but it might help to have a link of this one). However, I did find the artwork that is based on the photograph; the poses/positions are identical.
), including 3 already mentioned here.